My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Saturday, 6 January 2018

“Grande hazaña! Con muertos!” (An heroic feat! With dead men!), c1810–13,
plate 39 from the series, “Los Desastres de la Guerra” (The Disasters of War),
from the seventh and final 1937 edition of 150 impressions printed by the Calcogrfia Nacional
(Madrid) from the original plate.

Etching with drypoint and open-bite (i.e. “direct biting by acid
of localised areas of a plate” BM) on cream Arches verge vellum with watermark

Size: (sheet) 28 x 38.3 cm; (image borderline) 13.8 x 18.9 cm

Inscribed on the plate with the artist’s name (lower-left corner), title (below the image borderline at the centre) and number (outside the image borderline at the upper-left).

Condition: the impression has been recently cleaned and is now in
very good condition with no tears, holes, folds, abrasions, stains or foxiing.
The platemark has virtually disappeared with only a faintest trace remaining, resulting
from the sheet having been flattened. (Note that other copies from this final
edition also reveal soft platmarks.)

I am selling this original Goya print with generous margins as
published in 1937 for a total cost of AU$537 (currently US$422.87/EUR351.45/GBP311.67
at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the
world.

If you are interested in purchasing this genuine etching by Goya
taken from the original plate, please contact me
(oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make
the payment easy.

This print has been sold

In an earlier discussion concerning past conventions of shading, I
mentioned how Goya used horizontal strokes. Although this very graphic image
may be difficult to visually digest and examine closely given that Goya clearly
wished to shock the viewer with this dreadful scene of atrocities committed
during the Peninsular War (1808–14), note how he represents shadows and broad
areas of tone with horizontal lines.

Interestingly, the plate-tone of this impression (i.e. the faint
grey background) and which also features in the earlier editions was not an
attribute that Goya envisaged. Goya’s vision, as revealed by the early proofs
that he printed (i.e. impressions made/”pulled” before an edition) was to
remove all trace of surface ink so that the dark intaglio lines contrast
strongly with the white of the paper. No doubt the publishers of this print
wished to make the image more “finished” (i.e. pictorially resolved) as they
not only added the plate tone but also introduced the image borderline to
define where the image “ends” so that the inscribed title would rest with
conventional formality below the border.